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[Bree]

I'm watching my friend play through The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and it's got me thinking about boss battles. The Zelda series has established a pretty classic formula for boss fights:

Attack Pattern A- Pause, allow for strike- After 3 times, move on to Pattern B, C, etc.

These boss battles are usually in an enclosed arena, with two or three planes at most.

What I'm interested in, is what boss battles have you seen that break the mold from typical videogame fights? What ideas would you like to see?

[Core Xii]

. He's got a very unpredictable pattern.

[baconman]

Jables's Adventure shines in this department. If you haven't played it already, you really oughta. Some of that stuff is just outright brilliant.

The final boss of Metal Slug XX is quite a quirky one too, and there are a few Sonic the Hedgehog encounters - especially in Sonic 3 & Knuckles - like the boss battles in Marble Garden Zone, Star Light Zone, Mushroom Hill, and Death Egg Zones.

Core Xii: I see what you did thar. lol

[s0]

Core Xii: I see what you did thar. lol

i dont cuz im dum

[forwardresent]

Shadow of the Colossus had amazing boss battles, each boss was a puzzle to get to the weak point, climbing up bosses whilst your grip meter slowly ran out as the boss thrashed around trying to get you off it.

If Shadow of the Colossus didn't nail it perfectly, I'd want more bosses like that.

[rivon]

The End from Metal Gear Solid 3... The best bossfight ever

[Geeze]

I've been playing MGS3 for the first time thru. AND I ACCIDENTALLY SKIPPED THE END.
Now I'm sad

Code:

bool _ = true
for (;_;) //infinite loop is sad.

[leonelc29]

can Monster Hunter count in too? i don't know what "typical" you mean, but most Wyvern and Crab and other big monster have their own additional set of move on top of some shared move, and somehow unpredictable(or i'm just a noob)

[rivon]

I've been playing MGS3 for the first time thru. AND I ACCIDENTALLY SKIPPED THE END.
Now I'm sad

Code:

bool _ = true
for (;_;) //infinite loop is sad.

Skipped the end or skipped The End?

[Geeze]

The End. How should I know that if you save and quit at the beginning of that battle, keep a two-week break, and come back, Snake finds The End dead. Because of oldness. Brilliant. Annoying, but brilliant. I heard some speedrunners use that trick.

[forwardresent]

You can also kill him whilst he's in a wheelchair if I remember correctly, and skip that battle in favour of some super soldiers instead.

[DavidCaruso]

Everyone in this thread play Alien Soldier right now. Some of the best and most intense boss fights I've ever experienced in any 2D action game (which is pretty much a necessity given how the entire game is essentially a huge awesome boss rush sometimes interspersed with short level segments).

[noah!]

Personally, I like boss battles that reward initiative, and I don't think we see many of those today. Bosses like the "

" piranha from Yoshi's Island and such. (come to think of it, Alien Soldier also did a really good job at that; most bosses could be taken down within seconds if you started attacking right when they became vulnerable)

Also, I've been playing through Rocket Knight Adventures lately and have been really impressed with the bosses there. I'm particularly a fan of

. If anything, the idea of "running away to get into position" is definitely one to be explored.

And finally, to conclude, Pharaoh Man from Rockman 4MI.

[Glyph]

Knights In The Nightmare had an unusual... everything, really. The bosses were different in that they actually posed a serious threat (insta-kill moves, thirty-second attack sequences).
The WarioWare bosses were always odd (and some were pretty awesome as well)
Yoshi's Island had some interesting setups (Inside Prince Froggy's stomach, fighting Rafael the Raven on the moon). That being said, it was still platforming/egg shooting skills that would win the day for you in those fights. (EDIT: beaten to the punch!)
@DavidCaruso: I totally agree. Although I never beat the stinkin' final boss.

[s0]

Everyone in this thread play Alien Soldier right now. Some of the best and most intense boss fights I've ever experienced in any 2D action game (which is pretty much a necessity given how the entire game is essentially a huge awesome boss rush sometimes interspersed with short level segments).

Couldn't agree more.

Treasure is pretty big on boss fights in general, for instance

(another game everyone should play) has like 5000 awesome bosses and minibosses per stage and they all integrate smoothly into the structure of the level.

[J-Snake]

In my metroid rethought (Stardust Genom) for some enemies/bosses you will need to use destructible and physicalized environment (TrapThem-physics and more) to shape a combat environment to your advantage. It might be usefull to have walls for wall-jump-evades and so on, just according to the action-design of the boss. Or you prepared the whole ceiling to collapse on him... Then you can provoke the boss to get into your "trap". There will also be many other layers in combat-design. You can skillfully guide enemies to beat other enemies and so on. Important are designs that lead you only indirectly to the goal. For example you will be able to scan the biologic structure of an enemy and you might find out that he is prone to a certain liquid cocktail you can individually mix yourself from the ingredients found in the environment. You can shoot a wound open and shoot the cocktail right into it, as example. Then the use of tech-toys can have a multi-layered usage in a boss fight. For example you will find beam-cells, you will have to decide where to place them yourself (spawn points for abbreviation). Temporarily you can place some of them strategically useful for a boss-fight to evade his attacks and to gain positioning-advantage. I can go on but I think you get some idea.

And the interesting thing is that the game won't tell you how to do it. There can be many fundamentally different ways how to approach a boss. Not all of bosses are just isolated entities doing their independent thing, they can be dynamically wired to all the multilayered-happening/dynamics in the environment while still keeping clean action-design.

Then there is also another concept of a boss based solely on advanced A.I. and random encounters during the whole game. There can be a hunter with similar mechanics like yourself, only driven by the A.I. searching for you, like Terminator. If you manage to beat him in the early stage of the game you are rid of him for the rest of the game. You can also hide and avoid a contact but you have to take into account that he might come again, and you never know when, it's a living factor based on probability and only restricted in unpractical situations. That also adds the thrill of choice WHEN to face this boss despite making further progress in the game.

These approaches make the game more alive in addition.

That is a snippet of what I am designing over the years. I am aware that it is revolutionary game-design but I found ways to make it possible and to keep my mind sane.

[Mittens]

Last year I found myself fascinated with the same kind of stuff about boss fights so I made my own little game where all you do is fight one boss.

after watching how people played it, and the feedback i got, i discovered exactly why games keep coming back to the same "zelda" model for bossfights, people don't seem to understand when given something else.

How my game worked was that the player needed to attack the boss in his "arm pit" as he went to his you, if you didn't do this, then there was no way to block his hit (the only way to stop it was by hitting first)
the reaction it got, was people would just sit there and continue getting hit waiting for that zelda moment where the boss stops attacking and points out what you are meant to do, like saying "your turn now".

It's a pretty challenging thing to reshape player expectations when they are grounded in years and years of the same formula.

anyway, if you want to try kill the boss you can play my little game in browser here (unity3d) http://www.kingdomscollide.com/annihilon_game/WebPlayer.html

[Core Xii]

Core Xii: I see what you did thar. lol

What? I don't get it either. Is there something in the audio of the video? I only watched it muted to make sure it displays the fight properly.

[J-Snake]

@ Jackson

The key is to make the player well known with the rule-set of the game. If you put arbitrary mechanics here and there no wonder people won't understand it because it breaks the immersion of context. The player should be given a clean way to figure out how everything works so that then the challenge is in his own creativity and skill how to approach the situation, instead being hold back by the lack of knowledge. I carry this design-philosophy in my mind all the time.

[baconman]

Okay, the final bosses in the DKC games -are- the 3-patterns-of-3-attacks formula incarnate. In fact, every boss from any DKC is. I thought that was a sarcastic reply to the 3-patterns-of-3-attacks Zelda formula that the OP was hoping to get around...

>.>'